December 2013

December 31, 2013

To the extent I can, I am claiming global intellectual property right on these three questions asked together. I did it first here and anyone doing so henceforth will be held in violation of my IPR. The penalty will be determined by my imaginary patent attorneys.

In case you do not believe me, I have even created this T-shirt to prove it:

Given my unique standing as a sage-philosopher, millions look to me for answers to troubling existential questions such as what resolutions to make for a new year. My resolution for 2014 is to ask these three questions either together or in random combinations to any situation in life without waiting for their answers.

I am conscious that you also have the option of asking Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin to help resolve life’s many dilemmas in front of a dropping ball in Times Square.As a teaser Cooper has already tweeted a topless photo of Griffin taken from behind saying she sent him the picture of “her outfit for New Year's Eve. She's kidding, right? Please tell me she is.” Oh, the things ageing hosts do for the ratings!

So I am grateful that you are here.

Unless we all, the entire sentient world, wake up on the morning of the first day of the randomly numbered 2014 in eternal bliss free of any suffering whatsoever, let’s not make much of a change of a numeral. I mean you can because it is not mandatory to follow what I say here but still just saying. At the very least can 2014 guarantee that none of us will have to work to survive? Also, all of us will be debt-free? Okay, can we at least get one day free of creditors calling to remind that our bills are way past due? If even this minor wish is not granted by 2014, then 2014 can go 2014 itself.

Trust me, the only sane questions to ask are So? So what? So what now?

December 30, 2013

Memes are babies born of social media incest. And do they proliferate quickly or do they proliferate quickly?

This morning I discovered that Indian actor Alok Nath began trending so much on Twitter so suddenly in the form of some pretty hilarious jokes that he has become a bona fide meme.

Alok Nath, for those of you who do not know about him, is a successful movie and television actor almost irremediably assigned to play roles that swing between being pious and beatific. If Pious and Beatific Singh had a baby boy, they would name him Alok Nath.

His onscreen characters routinely speak of “Sanskar”, the word for ‘family values’ in many Indian languages. A mash-up of all the characters that he has played—and he has played a ton—could be described pious wistfulness. The default expression of his onscreen persona is one that might be permanently asking the question “But how do I save this wretched world?”

It is against this backdrop that the Twitter jokes, many of them are pretty hilarious in their gratuitous putdown, should be seen. Like all memes it is hard to tell what started it all but going by Indian media reports it could be a random tweet about how India learned all about heart attacks thanks to Alok Nath. Since Alok Nath and tweets about him are so Indian pop culture specific I doubt if my non-Indian readers or even many Indian readers unaware of the actor would catch the humor in them. Well, that’s just too bad.

It is pretty stupid, this whole idea of Twitter lifting “tweeple” out of obscurity and according to them both minor celebrity and followers. At least Alok Nath has to his credit some body of work unlike those who mock and deride him. But that’s the way it is.

Here is a sampling of some funny ones:

Before Alok Nath, there was Ajit, the iconic Indian actor who played many highly visible and successful villainous roles throughout his career. Jokes about what Ajit might say in any given situation abounded for quite sometime but they seem to have faded now. So as a tribute to him here are a couple fresh ones I just confected for the late actor.

When Mona Darling told Ajit that he had been replaced as a meme by Alok Nath, he asked, “Baby, Yeh Alok Nath kaun hai, aadmi hai ke teerath dham?”

Ajit also asked his moll “Mona Darling, aur yeh me-me kya hai?” and then as if hit by a truck called epiphany he said, “Oh, I see, its me, me meaning main hi main.”

December 29, 2013

The size of Earth in comparison with the sun. (Illustration: NASA and European Space Agency)

One significant news story that almost slipped by me unnoticed relates to India’s likely emergence as a global leader in solar power. A new World Bank report positions India as the potential global leader in solar power and as one of the the lowest cost destinations.

The World Bank report ‘Paving the way for transformational future: Lessons from JNNSM Phase 1’ offers a very sunny (couldn’t help that) view of the solar power sector in the country.

“In a short span of three years, India has made impressive strides in developing its abundant solar power potential. With more than 300 million people without access to energy and industry citing energy shortage as key growth barrier in India, solar power has the potential to help the country address the shortage of power for economic growth,” Onno Ruhl, World Bank country director in India, has been quoted as saying. “However, while India is clearly emerging as a global leader in the area of solar power, to achieve its target of adding 20,000 MW of solar capacity by 2022, it needs to address the key barriers and constraints that could come in the way of scaling up the solar program,” Ruhl said.

JNNSM stands for the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. Once you get past the disturbing inevitability naming every major project by individuals from a specific family, you do begin to see the enormously transformation potential of solar power for India. We all know that almost the entire country is baked by the sun for the better part of the year.

Of course, there are significant challenges as pointed out by the report. It highlights many of them that could inhibit India from tapping its full potential by 2022. “These include lack of access to low cost financing; inadequate solar infrastructure; lack of raw materials for several solar PV (photovoltaic) manufacturers; and an underdeveloped supply chain leading to high inventory costs.”

Ashish Khanna, an energy specialist and one of the authors of the report, says, “Building on the success of Phase 1, the program now needs to focus on promoting financing of solar projects by commercial banks, developing shared infrastructure facilities such as solar parks and identifying comparative advantage of Indian manufacturing across the supply chain.”

It is in the area of solar parks that my home state of Gujarat has really stirred things up. A news story on the Bank’s India section says, “The report recommends publicly developed infrastructure such as solar parks to help increase efficiency and lower costs. A Solar park in Charanka (Patan district) in Gujarat is today the largest solar park in Asia. Such shared infrastructure facilities helps in developing critical infrastructure, including facilities for power transmission, roads and water, thereby ensuring the rapid development of solar projects as well as local employment generation, the report adds. In addition, India’s plans to develop ultra-mega solar projects will help showcase the potential for large scale grid connected solar projects to the entire world.”

In terms of costs, the report says, “It (India) has reduced the costs of solar energy to $0.15 per kWh, making India amongst the lowest cost destinations for grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) in the world.”

This is clearly one of the few sunshine stories to come out in 2013. One was under the impression that it is China which is forging ahead in solar power, which it probably is, but India’s emergence is a refreshing revelation. The sheer sociological, cultural and ecological impact of the success of solar power cannot be overstated considering India’s demographic and geographic heft.

December 28, 2013

When I met Farooq Sheikh for the first and only time in the mid 1980s two adjectives came to my mind instantly—reflective and genteel. He was reading a book on economic theory which seemed incongruous considering he was waiting for a shot.

“I read anything and everything. Why miss out on knowledge?” he said to me as if to preempt a contrary view I might be harboring. For someone trained to be a lawyer, Sheikh came across as remarkably devoid of contention. There was a certain quietude about him, a certain polished demeanor that seemed entirely natural.

As I read the news of his passing at age 65 of a heart attack in Dubai, it struck me that I might have seen the most number of films of a single actor in Sheikh with a few possible exceptions. Going through his filmography on IMDB and elsewhere (Internet Movie Data Base) I counted close to 20 starting with his debut in ‘Garm Hawa’ (Scorching Winds) in 1973. It could be because he did movies that did not grab you by the scruff of your neck. Many of them had the distinction of being an easy watch where Sheikh excelled unfailingly without trying to excel.

I remember him telling me something to the effect that he wanted to “do as little as possible while acting”. “Chalo aaj acting kar lete hein,” (Let’s act today) is not how I see my profession,” he said. That summed up his long career in the movies and on television. He refrained from accentuating his gestures and instead chose to behave like any regular person would in real life. That said, Sheikh possessed that remarkable flair for comedy that often prompted him to “do as little as possible”.

His success as an actor of great substance did give Sheikh considerable fame and visibility but he made it look as if that was just something he chose to do just as he could have as easily become a lawyer or an economist. Quite like Balraj Sahni, one of Indian cinema’s finest actors, Sheikh had a screen presence that never came across as frenzied unless a performance demanded. There was no effort to keep the attention on himself. It always seemed as if his entire career was an ensemble piece even though in many of his roles he was the dominant presence.

Although often seen as a key figure in the so-called parallel cinema movement in the 1970s and 1980s, Sheikh’s made a transition into frothy and humorous romantic comedies effortlessly. There was always a lightness of touch to his performances that made those movies watchable without much fuss. Check out this scene from Satyajit Ray’s ‘Shatranj ke Khildai’ at cue 3.34.

December 27, 2013

Miley Cyrus adores herself and with some justification. Her latest video ‘Adore You’, apparently leaked by “some dick” (her words), has already been viewed nearly six and a half million times as of this morning. Evidently, there are millions who adore her as well.

The video’s theme is soft-focus self-pleasuring between white sheets whose fabric I could not determine. But I suppose the fabric is extraneous to what is being performed. She appears to be in the early throes of some indescribably pleasurable experience, many glimpses of which she is generous enough to offer us all via this video. In short, it is all good.

The primary purpose of such enterprise is as much to sell the new single as it is about perpetuating the Miley mystique. The image is intrinsic to her career as a singer-performer. Twerking and swinging naked on a wrecking ball are all part of a strategy to keep the attention riveted to her as much as possible. The strategy is obviously working.

This is the kind of video which comes with the ‘NSFW’ warning by websites that carry it. NSFW, for those of you clueless about the world of modern abbreviations, stands for Not Safe For Work, meaning if you start watching it at work there are fairly good prospects of you getting fired because it is too raunchy. Fortunately, it is my business to watch such NSFW content. I saw the video and found it to be anything but raunchy. Sure, she touches herself a lot in many suggestive ways but the final effect is disturbingly asexual. If the purpose is to demystify self-pleasuring so much that it comes across as rather unsexy, then it works wonderfully well. Of course, that is not the purpose. The objective is to be talked about and it is working very well when you consider that even an obscure blog like this one has a couple of things to say about it.

In August this year I said this about her onstage twerking during the MTV Video Music Awards : “As the coarsening of pop culture goes, I would rate Miley Cyrus foam-fingering the entertainment world at 0.724 on a scale of 10. In other words, it means nothing. It has no significance. It is not an indicator of any pop trends. It is not even remotely shocking. Silly? Sure, you can call it that. It was also manufactured rebellious juvenilia but beyond that it deserves no response.

She twerked her perky buttocks in the audience’s face, suggestively moved her right hand gloved in a foam finger through her own crotch and ground her co-singer Robin Thicke’s crotch. In short, nothing that people do not routinely find on the Internet these days.”

That sentiment pretty much sums up my response to this latest video as well. More power to her if she is able to keep up her magic alive by whatever means because in the world of pop music singing talent is just an incidental part of the deal.

December 26, 2013

The Hindi title of this eminently practical book by dear friend and fellow journalist Rajesh Ranjan is “Apna Computer Apni Bhasha Mein”. It means “Your Computer in Your Language.” It is a simple idea fraught with the transformative powers of the information age which the human race is already in the midst of.

The predominance of the English language in computers has long been remedied in the Chinese, Japanese and many other markets. The trend of what is known as localization of the computer technology has taken some time to gain ground in India. Rajesh, a seasoned journalist in Hindi, has been passionate about the need for localization as a vehicle to deliver the true potential of the computer technology to hundreds of millions of Indians who prefer their own rich languages to communicate.

Rajesh Ranjan

Only those who use languages other than English get the full measure of how important this localization is. Rajesh’s book, published by the New Delhi-based Samayik Prakashan, is the first of its kind to get into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to achieve a level of localization where the language is no longer a barrier to the world opened up by informational technologies. For a gifted writer in Hindi, it seems a bit amusing that Rajesh should begin his writerly career with such a technical book. I have been urging him to become a fulltime literary writer for years now.

At its core this book is a guide to how to turn the computer into a tool of great utility in Indian languages. An advocate of open source software Rajesh believes that that’s the way forward, especially because the digital world has begun to replace the real, tactile world in many aspects of life. “I believe that open source software is the way to complete the remaining part of the Tower of Babel,” he writers. He hits the nail on the head when he says that the Tower of Babel-like situation is standing in the way of democratization of knowledge and information.

He speaks of English as a language of “ruling and exploitation” which makes the computer outside the reach of ordinary millions who do not know the language. “Open source is the path which everyone can traverse, where all languages are equal, whether spoken by millions or a handful few,” Rajesh writes.

It is remarkable that Rajesh has taken the step of writing an entire book about localization and open source software in Hindi as a means to the computer technology adopting rich Indian languages. As I said this is a simple idea which is fraught with a great potential to transform society. It appears that this has already become Rajesh’s primary passion. While I applaud that unreservedly, I equally hope that he also employs his considerable command of the Hindi language to produce literature of modern times.

December 25, 2013

Sherlock Holmes is not real even though it may feel to the contrary. Some 126 years after his creation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes continues to enjoy remarkable reimaginings, the best of which is the BBC’s highly acclaimed series ‘Sherlock.’

The second season of the hit series ended with Sherlock, played with wicked self-absorption by Benedict Cumberbatch, leaping to his “death.” Of course, the BBC knows better than to actually kill a perfectly profitable protagonist. So it has just released a free seven-minute teaser “mini” episode on YouTube titled ‘Many Happy Returns” before season 3 of the series goes back on air on January 1, 2014.

The teaser teases by having a series of global crimes, which includes one in New Delhi, getting solved in a manner that only Sherlock can. That seems to set the stage for his return from the dead. As bringing back a highly lucrative fictional character from the dead goes, this is a pretty inventive way. In case it is lost on anyone that Holmes is coming back in some form at least, a video recording of his that Dr. Watson (A very able Martin Freeman), is watching ends with the detective saying, “I’ll be seeing you again very soon.”

For all one knows, season 3 may not even bring back Sherlock in the traditional manner but merely have a Holmes like apparition solving crimes without being actually revealed.

Having read Holmes for 42 years out of my 52, I am at a stage where it is no longer the plot but the atmospherics that draw me to it. Holmes is a habit for me which I succumb to unthinkingly and often. I was already reading a relatively less known story titled ‘The Resident Patient’ last night. Although the Holmes of yore as conceived by Conan Doyle was way too cool in and of himself, the BBC’s modern telling has that glossy visual shine that I am a sucker for.

December 24, 2013

For Indians of my generation and somewhat older who grew up in what could be called mofussil* towns, ‘Come September’ was the very epitome of hip Western popular music.

Weddings among middle class families of Ahmedabad, who considered their tastes in “English” music international, were incomplete without the 1961 ‘Come September’ theme instrumental being played either on the vinyl record or by malnourished wedding band members. By band I mean the marching band. Notwithstanding their emaciation such band members invariably did a terrific job of playing the theme. Their performance was doubly noteworthy because they had to endure the sight of middle-aged Gujarati men flailing about in what they thought was a form of dance called twist. Twist rapidly turned into garba.

As a reward for playing ‘Come September’ the band members were given two scoops of “kaju-draksh’ (cashew-raisin) ice cream that would melt in about 12 and a half seconds in Ahmedabad’s humiliating heat. No one thought it necessary to serve the ice cream only after the band had finished playing their specific number of songs. The result was that they all drank their ice cream rather than eat it. The ice cream was either served in steel bowls with spoons that resembled mini snow shovels or in thick ‘Yera' bowls whose thick wall acted as a magnifying glass which focused the sun’s rays on the scoops so intensely that sometimes the ice cream started to boil. (Somewhat of a literary exaggeration to achieve hopefully humorous effect).

I digressed so much because thinking of this particular composition by Bobby Darin , triggered so many tangential memories, including even that of the summer heat. There was no second helping of ice cream because it was expensive, especially the ‘kaju-draksh’ flavor. When this theme came back gushing out of an obscure corner of my brain the other day I smiled reflexively. It is a catchy composition and merely because I like it, it does not make it any less. It was such a big hit in those days in Ahmedabad and I suspect many parts of India that there were beatbox artists who would play the entire composition using their mouth and nose.

‘Come September’ was inevitably played when one of my older cousins got married in the late 1960s. The ‘kaju-draksh’ ice cream was served just about the same time when the band started playing the theme. I vividly remember being terribly torn between whether to eat or dance. I did both. A video of that would have gone viral today.

So here is to ‘Come September’ at the end of December. The song was composed the same year I was born—1961. That probably explains its draw on me.

*Mofussil used to refer to small town India of the kind I grew up in. It is considered mildly pejorative by some because it can connote a certain lack of finesse and sophistication. It does not bother me one bit.

December 23, 2013

The hyperloquacious*, messianic “common man” Arvind Kejriwal has been inevitably coopted into the politics of government formation. His Aam Admi Party (AAP), which made a blockbuster electoral debut in New Delhi’s elections recently, is set to become the Indian capital’s chief minister with the cynical help of a party he until recently loved to loathe.

Fueled by blazing idealism Kejriwal has been promising a sort of moral revolution to overthrow the entrenched corrupt established order for sometime now. With the resounding but somewhat inadequate victory of his party he was not sure whether he should do what is required and expected of all those who take part in electoral politics—namely try and form a government even if it means drawing some sustenance from the very order you had revolted against. Eventually though he has chosen to accept “external” or “outside” support from the Congress Party, which until recently ruled the city-state of New Delhi.

As if to mitigate his very private sense of guilt at having now become chief minister Kejriwal has asserted that it is not him who is the chief minister but the capital’s “aam aadmi” or ordinary citizen. (Aam means common in Hindi/Urdu and Aadmi means Man. The “Man” may be loosely used to include women as well but it often necessarily means the male gender). My unsolicited advice to Kejriwal would be to stop saying that he is not the chief minister but “aam admi” is. Apart from the fact that it means nothing it almost seems as if it is a device to transfer blame to the nebulous, unspecific ordinary citizen in case he fails. Or as my dear friend and fellow journalist Kajal Basu put it, “Glad to see the bloke swatted on the nose. Sometimes, it seems to me that he's just trying to cover his ass in case he bombs out by making the aam janta party to any decisions he'll take while in the chair. Time he understood realpolitik - that the Congress-BJP duopoly is just waiting for him to come a cropper and wipe out the AAP (and future nonideological forays into the political space).”

Although so far it may not seem like it, I am happy that in Kejriwal an outsider has risen to disrupt the established order. To the extent that he would do what he says he really wants to do I think it might introduce a new force to India’s polity. However, the established order anywhere is a monster that can eat such movements for breakfast. It is a danger Arvind Kejriwal and his AAP will have to learn to ward off. They will also have to learn that electoral politics eventually is about getting elected and forming government. It is way less complicated than they have pretended so far. It would be nearly impossible for Kejriwal to toggle between the messiah and the politician, not least because while the former cares nothing about who follows him, the latter is by its very definition about who and how many follow him.

The Congress Party’s decision to extend outside support is a classic lesson in realpolitik in how to retain grip on power after losing it all. When it comes to staying powerful or within precariously close distance to power, I do not think the Congress Party has any peer in world history. It is not an accident that even when not in power Congress leaders have the body language of the powerful. With just eight seats the party has managed to retain its relevance under the dispensation of someone who reviled and insulted them as part his political strategy. If this is not realpolitik, what is?

At some level I feel that the AAP’s is a case of premature election. However, now that it is well and truly planted into the thick of electoral politics and governance, it will have to give up pamphleteering and get down to the business of fulfilling at least some of its mandate. I say some because no political party can and should fulfill all its promise in the interest of longevity.

As for Arvind Kejriwal, I think he should give up his expedient renunciation and accept that he is a power player now. I, of course, wish him very well.

December 22, 2013

Even as the visa fraud and wage dispute woes of the New York-based Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade remain unresolved, I have a few basic questions that do not throw up satisfactory answers. Perhaps the most important among them concerns the mandatory disclosure of material information by the prosecution that might help the accused.

I refer in particular to one of the sections of the rules governing the special responsibilities of a prosecutor under rule 3.8 as part of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. That section says the prosecutor shall “make timely disclosure to the defense of all evidence or information known to the prosecutor that tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense, and, in connection with sentencing, disclose to the defense and to the tribunal all unprivileged mitigating information known to the prosecutor, except when the prosecutor is relieved of this responsibility by a protective order of the tribunal.”

I presume that US Attorney Preet Bharara, the lead prosecutor in the case, was aware of the Indian court case and the judicial process against the domestic help, Sangeeta Richard. I am curious to know whether this material information was disclosed. It may well have been but from what I have read I am not so sure. It is possible that the Indian court process against Richard would have at the very least discouraged the authorities from carrying out such an intrusive arrest of Dr. Khobragade. However, as I said, I am not entirely clear about when the prosecution is required to disclose such material information. The standards governing a prosecutor’s conduct say a prosecutor “should not intentionally fail to make timely disclosure to the defense, at the earliest feasible opportunity, of the existence of all evidence or information which tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigate the offense charged or which would tend to reduce the punishment of the accused.”

Far be it for me to make any definite comment about whether Bharara and his team did this as prescribed in the standards. But that still does not stop me from raising the question.

Another question that remains unresolved in my mind relates to the so-called existence of two separate employment contracts between Richard and Dr. Khobragade. In fact, the two contracts have been cited by the prosecution as part of the visa fraud charge. The argument is that one contract, which offered wages in line with the minimum wage requirements in the U.S., was for the purposes of securing Richard’s visa and the other was the actual operational one under which much less wages were offered and agreed to.

Since I have zero expertise in such matters I turned to Neeraj Bhatia, a leading certified public accountant (CPA) in America and India with successful practice in Silicon Valley as well in New Delhi. He is also an immigration consultant with extensive understanding of immigration laws. Neeraj, who has been a longstanding friend of mine, made a general statement that for the kind of visa that Richard sought and obtained does not require any sponsor. The applicant directly approaches the US consulate for a visa with documents that support the case.

It appears that Richard knew of the second contract which allegedly paid her much less than the minimum U.S. wages. She was likely aware of it before she left India. If she was so troubled by it, why did she not make it an issue before leaving? Perhaps she has a perfectly persuasive answer but I am not aware of it. It appears that she acquiesced to the second contract even though she may have thoroughly disliked it.

Another point I am rather curious about is Count one of the charges against Dr. Khobragade that says that “the defendant, willfully and knowingly did make under oath, and under penalty of perjury ….. and did subscribe as true, a false statement with respect to a material fact in an application, affidavit, and other document required by the immigration laws and regulations prescribed there under, and did present such application, affidavit, and other document which contained such false statement”.

It is the applicant, in this case Richard, who is required to sign such a visa application under oath and penalty of perjury. Where is the question of the diplomat making a willfully false statement under oath and penalty of perjury? Even if one accepts for the sake of argument that the diplomat either actively encouraged Richard to make a false statement or subtly enabled her by looking the other way, it is still not her application directly. So my question is—does the penalty of perjury still apply to her?

It is possible that these questions stem from a poor understanding of the laws and standards that apply in this case. I ask them nevertheless because I do not think they have been asked so clearly.

On the issue of salary and wages I defer to Neeraj since that is what he does for a living. “The issue of salary and wages is of particular interest to me. Both here in the US and in India the cash value of benefits and perquisites have to be included in determining the final amount salary and wages. In the US, those would have to be included as part of the wages if that were to be reported on W-2. It seems this material part of the compensation given to the domestic help has not been factored in the wage calculation. It is very likely that after adding the value of these benefits as calculated in New York, the wage amount would come to more than $9.75 per hour,” Neeraj says.

However, he also points out that diplomats and those work for them are exempt from filing their taxes here in the U.S. That is because technically even though they are physically here, they are still considered to be working on Indian territory. If that is the case, he surmises, then the question of applying U.S. wages could be problematic and that could seriously weaken the whole premise of the case.